U.S. had better be ready to raze Iran’s nuclear sites (Charles Krauthammer)

Boston Herald ^ | Sept 15, 2006 | Charles Krauthammer

[jdm]

WASHINGTON - In his televised 9/11 address, President Bush said that we must not “leave our children to face a Middle East overrun by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons.” There’s only one such current candidate: Iran.

The next day, he responded thus (as reported by Rich Lowry and Kate O’Beirne of National Review) to a question on Iran: “It’s very important for the American people to see the president try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force.”

“Before” implies that the one follows the other. The signal is unmistakable. An aerial attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities lies just beyond the horizon of diplomacy. With the crisis advancing and the moment of truth approaching, it is important to begin looking now with unflinching honesty at the military option.

The costs will be terrible:

Economic: An attack on Iran will likely send oil prices overnight to $100 or even to $150 a barrel. That will cause a worldwide recession perhaps as deep as the one triggered by the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Iran might suspend its own 2.5 million barrels a day of oil exports, and might even be joined by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, asserting primacy as the world’s leading anti-imperialist. But even more effectively, Iran will shock the oil markets by closing the Strait of Hormuz through which 40 percent of the world’s exports flow every day.

The U.S. Navy will be forced to break the blockade. We will succeed but at considerable cost. And it will take time - during which time the world economy will be in a deep spiral.

Military: Iran will activate its proxies in Iraq, most notably, Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Sadr is already wreaking havoc with sectarian attacks on Sunni civilians. Iran could order the Mahdi Army and its other agents within the police and armed forces to take up arms against the institutions of the central government itself, threatening the very anchor of the new Iraq. Many Mahdi will die, but they live to die. Many Iraqis and coalition soldiers are likely to die as well.

Among the lesser military dangers, Iran might activate terrorist cells around the world, although without nuclear capability that threat is hardly strategic. It will also be very difficult to unleash its proxy Hezbollah, now chastened by the destruction it brought upon Lebanon in the latest round with Israel and deterred by the presence of Europeans in the south Lebanon buffer zone.

Diplomatic: There will be massive criticism of America from around the world. Much of it is to be discounted. The Muslim street will come out again for a few days, having replenished its supply of flammable American flags most recently exhausted during the cartoon riots. Their governments will express solidarity with a fellow Muslim state, but this will be entirely hypocritical. The Arabs are terrified about the rise of a nuclear Iran and would privately rejoice in its defanging.

The Europeans will be less hypocritical because their visceral anti-Americanism trumps rational calculation. We will have done them an enormous favor by sparing them the threat of Iranian nukes, but they will vilify us nonetheless.

These are the costs. There is no denying them. However, equally undeniable is the cost of doing nothing.

In the region, Persian Iran will immediately become the hegemonic power in the Arab Middle East. Today it is deterred from overt aggression against its neighbors by the threat of conventional retaliation. Against a nuclear Iran, such deterrence becomes far less credible. As its weak, non-nuclear Persian Gulf neighbors accommodate to it, jihadist Iran will gain control of the most strategic region on the globe.

Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days.

The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world will live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini’s ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map.

Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?

These are the questions. These are the calculations. The decision is no more than a year away.

[onyx]

Now, that being said, we can't afford to take the chance that Iran isn't bluffing.

Exactly.

70% more oil drilling permits have been approved since President Bush took office. The Alaska Petroleum Reserve has been opened to new drilling, and ANWR is up for new drilling (to be passed shortly by Congress).

IIRC, a recent report says there's a mother lode under the waters in the Gulf of Mexico? That said, I thought shortages of refineries are our major impediment?

I note that you didn't mention Israel?

[Jim Noble]

War with Iran is war to the death. A warplan which does not have sufficient resources for the conquest, occupation, and de-Islamification of Persia is a warplan that should stay on the shelf.

Bombing never, ever is sufficient to accomplish a strategic purpose.

And for those who want to bring up Hiroshima, don't.

Hiroshima was the culminating blow of four years of grinding, intense warfare which left millions of Nips dead, their industrial capacity destroyed, their fleet sunk, their armies shredded, their people starving - and still, they almost fought on.

If we had nuked Hiroshima on December 8, 1941, the war would still have had to be fought.

[Marine_Uncle]

I just seems to make sense we are waiting for those new generation deep penetrators before the final decision is made to attack. It has to be short and sweet. All Iranian ground to air and air to air defenses will be destroyed that are along the paths required and underground facilities will be destroyed. No ground troops required. Only Mossad and Iranian agents that want to see the Iranian regiem changed, to report along with sat photos etc., the damage assesments for additional strikes as required.

[nathanbedford]

Right you are and it is a good thing that he has that extra year and a quarter

[Jackie222]

Interesting thread. In fact, down right unnerving!!

[diamond6]

bttt

[USMCPOP]

I haven't researched it further, but did see this attribution for Churchill's quote:

Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm, Houghton Mifflin Co. (Boston)/ The Riverside Press (Cambridge), 1948; p. 348.


I also like this one: "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

[diamond6]

bump

[stockstrader]

Charles Krauthammer's discussion here is one that really puts into focus what our options are. As usual, he is right on the mark. An attack on Iran would have terrible consequences, but the only thing worse--are the consequences of doing NOTHING.

The only thing I would have added to his discussion is the time factor. Time is not on our side--as the democratic/liberal appeasement and capitulation lobby will attract more followers; and the fact that the longer we wait to neutralize Iran's nuclear ambitions, the more difficult it will become both politically and militarily.

It will have to be done. A pre-emptive strike will delay their nuclear dreams by at least a decade. Remember, we are dealing with Islamofascists here--sooner is better than later.

[GladesGuru]

You wrote, "Whether it was simple human justice, or folly, to cast our lot with 4 million Israelis against 1.4 billion Muslims with all the oil in the world, one can argue until the next millennium. But those risks which we accepted were courted initially when we had a monopoly on the nuclear bomb and then, later, when we were dealing with a rational adversary in the Soviet Union.

The Specter which confronts us now, as you point out, is an irrational adversary with the bomb."

I suggest that we consider that whatever we did or did not do would have made no difference to the Muslim world. Israel is not the issue. Islam and its' religious command to impose Sharia "law" on the dhimmi populations is the problem.

Islam must be either reformed or extirpated.

[GladesGuru]

"Unfortunately, closing the straits would be a relatively easy matter, which has always been a major concern in regards to open hostilities in the region. Run a ship out there and scuttle it. Straits blocked."

Use of either conventional or nuclear methods makes possible demolition of such a "cork" in a relatively short time.

[cowdog77]

Then, advisors from Foggy Bottom helped the President get up and talk about how islam is a Religion of Peace."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today's latest news from the Peaceful Ones:
"We shall break the cross and spill the wine ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome ... (May) God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen," said the statement, posted on Sunday on an Internet site often used by al Qaeda and other militant groups."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Tell me, are there any men left in Washington, or are they all cowards?"

[TomasUSMC]

The "tightening the screws strategy" just gives more time for the moslem terrorists to attain nukes. Remember they don't have to build them, they can steal or buy them or even have them given to them.

The moslems could be sneaking them into this country, already.

Go 100 percent from the start. We still have the technological edge to wipe out this Islamic Terror in a month, we just don't have the will. But soon they will catch up, THEN we will lose millions of lives before we beat them.

We can't risk waiting too long. Better to kill a few hundred thousand of theirs and err on the side of a quick victory than the other option.... millions dead on both sides.

[GladesGuru]

Neutron bombing of the area will remove the crews of the Iranian weapons. If necessaary, the area can be cleared with blast type nukes.

[caffe]

yes, we have to destroy our enemy ..

[TomasUSMC]

If we had nuked Hiroshima on December 8, 1941, the war would still have had to be fought.

---

But then we would have continued to nuke more and more of the japanese cities until they surrendered or where a footnote in history.

If we had nuked Tehran in September of 2001 and continued to nuke moslem cities whose countries sponsored terrorism, like Damascus and Baghdad, those countries would no longer have sponsored terrorism.

Then as you have said, we would have had to occupy them but their would not have been such disrespect of American force because the moslems would fear it much more ... much like the Germans and Japanese did in '45.

Either way the United States needs to be mobilized for war, with a draft and rationing and the whole works. This half-hearted KGC warfare is getting our troops killed and wounded for the wrong reasons....ISLAMIC CONSTITUTIONS that state that No Law Shall Contradict Islam.

[TomasUSMC]

Question RR

Who is surrounding whom in the middle east. Are we surrounding Iran or are we being surrounded by Islam?

[Jim Noble]

The key flaw is taking casualties to show that we are serious (i.e., as an end in itself), rather than taking casualties as a means to the end of crushing the enemy.

We could tolerate casualties at much higher levels if the enemy were being crushed. I don't want to quote Monsieur Kerry here, but I'm sure you know which of his quotes I'm thinking of.

[TomasUSMC]

Your right on

[beyond the sea]

I'm quite afraid, yet sure it will take a mushroom cloud over DC for that to happen. I just hope it's not a Federal Holiday when it happens. ---

****

LOL